Online sales are most of the story, but a real event still has people at the door with cash, phone bookings from someone who will not use a website, sponsors who need a ticket without paying for one, and the walk-up who decides at 7.55pm. Box office mode is how those sales go into the same system as everything else, so your numbers, your door count and your emails stay true. This guide shows what it does, how to use it on the night, and how to take card payments at the door without a second till.
What a box office sale is
A box office sale is an order you create yourself instead of the buyer. On tickts, the Box Office tab asks for the event, the date, the ticket type and the quantity, then the buyer's name and email. The order is created instantly and the buyer gets the same confirmation email as an online buyer, with the QR tickets attached as a PDF. From that moment it is indistinguishable from any other order: it counts against capacity, it appears in Sales, it scans at the door, and it can be refunded.
Three ways to record the money
| Payment | When to use it | What tickts does |
|---|---|---|
| Cash | The buyer hands you notes at the table | Records the sale as paid in cash; no processing fee |
| Card | Charged on a connected card reader, or taken on your own machine and recorded here | Records the sale; a connected reader charges the card and pays your Stripe account |
| Comp | Sponsors, performers, press, the mayor | Issues a real ticket at no charge, so the guest scans in like everyone else |
Walk-ups who are walking straight in
Someone buying at the door and going straight through does not need to be scanned as well. Once you have picked the ticket type, tick Mark as entered above the Sell button. The sale records their details as normal and the ticket is marked as entered with the time, exactly as if it had been scanned, so the live entry count stays right and nobody has to wave a phone about. It also means the QR on the emailed ticket cannot be passed to a friend and scanned later, because it has already been spent. Leave the box unticked for someone buying now and arriving later; their ticket scans normally when they turn up.
Card payments at the door, without a second till
Connect a Stripe card reader and the box office charges the card for you, with the money landing in your own Stripe account like every other sale. tickts adds nothing on top; Stripe's in-person card pricing applies, and it is lower than the online card rate. Any organiser with Stripe connected can use one.
- Order a reader from your Stripe dashboard. Stripe sells the WisePOS E and the Reader S700.
- In Dashboard, open Box Office and then the Card readers panel. Give the reader a name such as "Main gate", type the pairing code shown on its screen, and enter your venue address, which Stripe uses once to create the location.
- Press Register reader.
To sell, ring the sale as normal, pick Card, choose Charge on card reader, and press Sell ticket. The total appears on the reader, the customer taps or inserts, and when the payment is approved the sale records itself and the ticket is emailed.
Phone bookings and the person who will not use a website
Every club has one. Take the booking on the phone, ring it through the box office as Card if they read you a card number on your own machine, or as Cash if they will pay when they arrive and you are happy to trust them. For the second case, the reserve-and-pay option is the tidier tool: they reserve online or you reserve for them, the place is held, and the ticket is issued when you mark the order paid. Unpaid reservations release on their own after 48 hours.
Comps that behave
A comp on tickts is a real ticket with a real QR at £0, which is the point. It scans, it counts, and it shows in the door list. A sponsor's four seats are four tickets, not a note on a clipboard. If you give out a lot of them, a hidden ticket type unlocked by a code lets guests claim their own from the event page without you typing each one in.
Keeping the numbers honest
- Box office sales count against the ticket type's capacity and the date's overall capacity like any other, so you cannot oversell the room from the table by accident.
- Sales shows each order with its payment method, so cash can be reconciled against the float at the end of the night.
- Refunds work the same way. A cash sale refunded is recorded as refunded; the cash comes out of your pocket, as it always did.
- The door list, printable per date from the event or from Sales, includes box office buyers with their ticket codes, so a dead phone at the gate is not a crisis.
A door plan for a 200-seat show
One phone runs the scanner on the entry mode. A laptop or a second phone runs the Box Office tab for walk-ups, with Mark as entered ticked for anyone going straight in. A card reader sits beside it for the people who no longer carry cash, which is most of them. The door list is printed and face down under the laptop. Whoever is on the table watches the live count on the scanner phone, and when it reaches the licence figure the box office simply cannot sell another ticket, because the overall capacity is set.
